Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 22
July 2, 2019
The Pause Before Publishing
Savoring the Moment of PossibilityA diver stands poised at the edge of the board in a competition, and everyone hushes and watches.
The orchestra stops its cacophonous tuning in a full house and awaits the conductor’s arrival. The audience quiets, anticipating the performance to come in silence.
Some moments are ripe with anticipation and possibility.
Writing has similar moments, if you know where to look for them: before you hit publish on a blog post, or send a manuscript to the editor, or email that lengthy report to the people awaiting it. The pause before publication; the silence before sending.
Maybe this thing you’ve written will have an impact. It may mark a pivotal moment in your career, or change someone’s mind about an important issue, or resolve a thorny interpersonal problem. Perhaps, at some level, it will make the world a bit better.
This moment of possibility can feel wonderful, peaceful, or purposeful. When we rush through it, or linger in a state of stress and self-doubt, we lose the ability to savor that possibility.
Your only compensation for the work may be that sense of accomplishment, of having done something worthwhile and made an attempt. Don’t let it slip away. It is one of the secret joys of writing.
Missing the Moment
If you’ve been working up to the last second (as we all do sometimes), do you finish writing or revising and then quickly hit Send and hope for the best? Do you think, “I can’t even look at this thing any longer” and ship it off with impatience and fatigue?
We all rush right up to the deadline occasionally. Writers need deadlines to get the work done. But if we cut them too close, we lose the ability to savor that feeling of completion and deliver the work with satisfaction and even pride.
I always feel a slight sense of anxiety in my stomach when I run out of time. I suspect I’ve missed something. I worry.
Worry ruins the moment.
Letting Fear Consume the Moment
Once you have a decent draft, do you keep revising, questioning, and wondering if it’s right? Doubts and worries can creep in, and if the schedule isn’t absolute, you can linger in a state of doubt and anxiety, tweaking and tuning.
When writing my first book, I kept taking passes through, looking for more word choice changes. I started to worry about and criticize everything. Then a wise friend said “Sometimes you have to hit Publish.”
When you set your inner critic loose without boundaries, it starts questioning everything.
How to Savor the Moment
Can you make time and space for enjoying the moment of possibility? Can you embed the opportunity to savor the pause before publication into your writing practices? And what would your writing life feel like if you did?
There’s any easy way to find out: Plan to finish—really finish—a project the day before you hit Send. Give yourself a deadline the day before the real due date.
If you plan to publish a blog post on Wednesday, wrap it up on Tuesday. On Tuesday, read it through, tweak and tune it knowing that this is not the last moment. Then congratulation yourself. Knowing that you have one more opportunity to look at it lessens any stress or anxiety.
Wednesday, read it one more time. (You have a much better chance of catching stray typos when you have a night’s worth of distance.) You might even find something you really want to change, or an idea that elevates the piece. That’s a bonus.
Then—and this is key—savor the moment with intention. Even if it’s only a minute, acknowledge what you’ve written and its possible impact in the world. Take pleasure in the effort. Then hit send.
These experiences make writing more enjoyable, which inspires you to do more of it.
Try it and let me know what you think.
Related Posts
Let’s talk about the post-publication blues
The post The Pause Before Publishing appeared first on Anne Janzer.
June 30, 2019
A Simple Guide to Discounts and Promotions
I’ve had some moderate success doing promotions of discounted books.
These two blog posts for the Nonfiction Author’s Association lay out my process and results:
Part One covers setting the price, duration, and promotion plans for your discounted sale.
Part Two is about evaluating the performance of your campaign
Check them out and see if they work for you.
The post A Simple Guide to Discounts and Promotions appeared first on Anne Janzer.
June 17, 2019
How Shortcuts Cheat the Writer
We’ve all heard those seductive promises:
Write your novel in a weekend!
Make six figures from blogging this year
You can become a best-selling author using ghostwriters
Although the titles are fictional, their real-world counterparts abound on the Internet. If you dream of publishing a book or “being a writer,” these promises are compelling.
I’m not saying they’re scams. You might write a book by following someone’s formula, or create a blog that attracts consistent traffic.
If that’s the path you want to take, go for it. But realize what you’re missing.
What’s Lost along the Easy Path
Whether the final product is a book, an ongoing blog, or an in-depth article, there are two ways to approach the process:
Get to the end result as quickly as possible, with the minimum amount of effort
Approach the project as a transformative experience
When you take the first path, the shortcut, you lose the benefits of the journey.
How is writing transformative? Consider the following:
In the struggle with words, you become a better writer.
By all means, hire editors and learn from them. Work with a co-author. But if you hire ghostwriters, you won’t improve your own writing skills.
In writing about a topic, you deepen your expertise.
Doing the necessary research strengthens your understanding of your subject. In trying to explain it, you crystallize your thoughts. Writing forces you to think deeply and make new connections.
Writing enhances your empathy.
You may have heard that reading increases empathy. So does writing, if you set out with an ideal reader in mind or to meet specific audience needs.
In creating a book proposal, for example, you research your target market. In writing a novel, you picture an ideal reader. When pitching an article or drafting a blog post, you think about the people you want to reach.
Each of these activities require you to take someone else’s perspective. That’s the definition of cognitive empathy, a trait that serves you well in areas beyond writing.
The focused work of writing retrains your brain.
In his excellent book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues that we are losing our capacity to immerse ourselves in focused work. His basic premise is this:
Deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. The few who cultivate this rare skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
Because our brains are constantly changing, rewiring, and adapting to our behavior, you can change this trend. Deep work begets more capacity to do deep work.
Whether you write to explain a nonfiction topic or create a fictional world, creativity and productivity spring from the ability to focus on the work.
By immersing yourself in the writing, you increase your mental capacity for deep work.
The Opposite of Easy is Transformative
But if you want to write something that provides real value to others and strengthens your expertise, don’t shy away from the work.
Don’t make the process harder than it needs to be, however. Set up a healthy writing pattern. Plan carefully and learn from others. Think about your audience’s needs before writing.
It won’t be quick. It won’t seem easy.
It might be fun.
It will be fulfilling.
Related Resources
If you’re planning to write a nonfiction book and want to start out on the right path, check out my course on Getting Started on Your Nonfiction Book.
The post How Shortcuts Cheat the Writer appeared first on Anne Janzer.
June 10, 2019
Writing to Persuade: A Book Review
Short VersionIf you want to change people’s opinions with your words, and particularly if you want to write an opinion piece that makes an impact, read this new book by the former editor of the New York Times Op-Ed page. Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall interweaves fun, behind-the-scenes stories about the workings of the Times opinions page with solid advice grounded in both research and experience. It’s both informative and entertaining.
Long Version
In Writing to Persuade, Trish Hall shares her hard-won lessons as editor of the New York Times op-ed page, handling everything from celebrity opinion pieces to personal discussions of sensitive topics. If you’ve ever wondered exactly how those pieces land on the website or in the paper, or what makes one of these things effective, this is the book for you. More importantly, if you hope to change other people’s minds through writing, whether op-ed pieces, books, or blog posts, this book has valuable advice.
The Memoir
Part One of the book, “Lessons from My Story,” shares Hall’s personal journal from writer to editor to the op-ed editor at the New York Times.
Regular readers of the New York Times will enjoy the “behind the scenes” stories of the pieces that make it to the op-ed page sprinkled throughout the book. There’s a particularly entertaining chapter on “Dealing with Celebrities” that will make you pause the next time you read an opinion piece from a well-known name.
While the book then quickly moves into general writing advice, Hall has years’ worth of stories to use to illustrate her points. The memoir nature of the book underpins the advice that follows, making the whole thing an entertaining read.
Solid Writing Advice
The meat of the book is practical advice on exactly how you, as a reader, can learn to write persuasively.
In the preface, she presents her 15 principles of persuasive writing, concisely laying out the essential advice that she extrapolates on in the remainder of the book. It would make a great poster for nonfiction writers – and if you got no further than following the advice in the preface, you’d be in good shape.
Parts Two through Five cover finding your own voice and story, winning people over, and general writing tips.
Hall shares personal advice and tactics as well as general strategies.
On finding her own voice, she suggests that “Sometimes, when I can’t get started, I write with my eyes closed, to block out reality.” Fascinating tip.
But her unique angle is her inside view into effective opinion pieces.
If you hope to publish an opinion piece in a major publication, pay attention to her advice on how to please editors: surprise them, offer a fresh perspective on an old issue, or delight them with the quality of your writing. (Easy enough, right?)
And there are other gems we should all remember. For example, she suggests that persuasive writers make more positive statements than negative ones. “Remember that scaring people and being negative does not generally agree with our fundamental natures..”
Always cede the good points that the other side makes. If you want to rebut something, repeating it with a negative like not only reinforces the point. (See how the “I am not a crook” rebuttal worked for Nixon.)
My Favorite Parts
My favorite section may be the last one, entitled “The Psychology of Persuasion.” It’s right up my alley, exploring the psychological underpinnings of effective persuasive writing. If you want to change minds with your words, you need some insight into how those minds work.
The chapters here include guidance on the power of moral values, what really changes people’s minds, and the difficulty of changing beliefs. These are all topics I tackled in Writing to Be Understood; Hall treats them brilliantly from her perspective, and shares fascinating research that applies to writing.
One of the tactics she suggests here is that when writing, you inform people of the “socially accepted consensus” if you want people to open their thoughts. And she also impresses on writers the importance of not judging those who don’t agree with them.
If you want to change the world through writing, pick up this book and internalize its lessons. You’ll never read the opinion sections of the paper in quite the same way again.
More Books for Writers:
What Alan Alda Understands about Science Writing
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker [Review]
The post Writing to Persuade: A Book Review appeared first on Anne Janzer.
June 4, 2019
How to Set a Deadline that Works
Does your next writing project have a deadline?
If not, I suggest you give yourself one. The larger the project, the more important it is to have a deadline.
Deadlines make the work better
There’s scientific research for this from Dan Ariely, described in his book Predictably Irrational. If you don’t want to read the whole book, find a short description on my post here: Deadlines Add Life to the Writing Process.
Not all deadlines are created equal. Some can force us to short-change the work, burn ourselves out, or otherwise lose the joy of writing. The key is finding the balance.
What Makes a Good Deadline
An effective deadline:
Is tough but achievable – comfortably within the realm of possibility, but still requiring focused effort
Allows enough time to do high quality work, if you schedule wisely
Is near enough to motivate you to act now. (A one-year deadline is too far away, for example)
Getting this just right is important. Deadlines can be toxic and counter-productive if they:
Don’t leave enough time for good work
Prohibit necessary self-care and sleep
Follow other deadlines relentlessly, one after the other, without time to rest and refresh
Creativity happens in the open spaces, the breathing room. If your attention is always focused on making a pending deadline, you have fewer mental cycles for creative work.
Deadlines Focus the Writer’s Mind
Most people think of deadlines as motivators–and they are. But even more important, they can help you focus on the important work.
A deadline that is challenging and close enough forces you to clear away the underbrush from your schedule:
Checking email less often so you can work in focused bursts
Saying “no” to commitments that aren’t as important as the scheduled project
Prioritizing the project-related work in the most productive parts of your day
By reducing other distractions, you turn more of your mental cycles onto the work. Whether you’re actively writing or taking a break as you go about your day, your brain continues tinkering with the subject.
When I’m in the midst of writing a book, ideas will pop into my head early in the morning or while I’m driving. Conversations frequently surface interesting ideas. My brain is primed to find connections to the book, so it does, even when I’m not sitting and typing.
If you don’t have a deadline, make one up.
This blog is a living example of the power of a deadline to spur output. I’ve committed to myself to publish a new writing post every other week. (It used to be once a week, but see the note above about self-care.) Since switching to the every-other-week schedule, I’ve only stretched missed one date. No one seemed to notice, but that’s another story.
The self-imposed blog commitment keeps me thinking deeply about writing, speaking with others about their issues, and continuing to research. It’s a great exercise in sustaining cognitive empathy, by thinking of what others want and need to know.
Given the many urgent demands on our attention, it’s tempting to put aside the hard work of deep thought. Having a commitment helps.
If you don’t have deadlines for your work, impose them on yourself
Setting Your Own Deadlines
For a small writing project, like a blog post or book review, choose a date that is close enough to motivate you but leaves time for incubation.
Base the deadline on the work: Decide how you’ll allocate the work in that time period. For a blog post, you might:
Research and outline Tuesday
Write a rough draft Wednesday
Polish and revise Thursday
Publish Friday
Make the deadline visible. Put something up by your desk, or mark it with a bright color on your calendar. Commit to yourself, and if that’s not enough, commit to someone else. (“I will post this blog on Friday.”)
For a longer project like writing a book, break the task into smaller pieces with multiple component deadlines. For example:
By the end of July, I will have completed the first pass of research, reviewing the top academic publications on the subject and reading four books I’ve identified as critical
By the end of August I will have scheduled interviews with 20 subject matter experts
By September 30 I will have completed by second pass of research and all interviews
By October 31 I will have a book proposal and chapter outline
Remember, make it urgent enough to encourage deep work, but not so urgent that you cannot sleep, relax, or give your brain a break.
Related Posts
Deadlines Add Life to the Writing Process
Focusing on One Project
The post How to Set a Deadline that Works appeared first on Anne Janzer.
May 21, 2019
Why Writing Takes More, and Less, Time than You Think
People often ask me how long it took me to write something: a book, a blog post, a paper, whatever.
I suspect what they want to know is this: how many hours did you put into it?
I never know how to answer. Even if I tracked my time, where would I draw the line? Would I count the time spent figuring out what to write, or contemplating the topic while on a walk, or in bed in the early morning hours? And for a book, do I count the months or years spent reading, researching, and talking with people?
Some of my most productive “writing” time doesn’t look anything like work.
Writing isn’t just one act – it’s many. This fundamental misunderstanding causes us to dramatically over- or under-estimate the time we need to do something.
Why it might take more time than you plan
We’re often unpleasantly surprised by the amount of time a project takes, whether it’s a simple blog post or a book, because we forget to plan for the entire process.
We think about the act of writing, but not
Planning
Outlining
Revising and polishing
Proofreading and formatting
Mo Bunnell is a business author who actually tracked the time he spent writing his book, The Snowball System. His breakdown is fascinating. (You can watch the video below.)
To sum up, of the more than 700 hours he spent on the book, about 389 were spent on writing and revision. There’s a great deal of work beyond writing and editing.
Writing a book is an extreme case. You’ll put in a great deal of work on the back end to get through publication and book launch.
But the general concept holds true for nearly any important writing. Think about the project holistically.
What you can do:
Don’t neglect the tasks surrounding the actual drafting.
If you care about the quality of your writing, leave sufficient time for revision and editing.
Why it might take less time
If that was the glass-half-empty part, here’s the good news: Writing may take less time than you think, if you take advantage of your background mental processes.
Much of the work of conjuring ideas happens in the unseen corners of the mind, beyond the level of conscious cognition.
The writer who knows how to activate subconscious mental processes has an unfair advantage in terms of productivity.
When you’ve spent time pondering and incubating your topic, then the words come quickly while drafting. You get into the zone, the words flow, and your first pass at something is pretty darned decent. Phrases, metaphors, and concepts swirl around in your head and appear when summoned.
That’s when writing is fun.
The good news is, you can do things to set yourself up to have more of this fluid and fun writing.
What you can do:
Leave time in your schedule for your subconscious processes to work on your topic. (Psychologists call this unseen creative work incubation.)
To kick-start this offline work, you have to first engage with the topic. As soon as possible, start working on your writing project, through:
Research and note-taking
Journaling
Freewriting
Talking with other people
Then give yourself a break, letting it simmer in your head and reminding yourself of the project. If time is short, try taking a walk while occasionally reminding yourself, gently, about the writing project.
When it comes time to actually write, you may be pleasantly surprised by how quickly you can finish the first draft.
That’s how writing can take less time, at least at the keyboard.
Further Reading
Read more about tuning your mental processes in The Writer’s Process: Getting Your Brain in Gear.
Or check out these other related posts:
Writing and the Planning Fallacy
Don’t Buy Into the One-Step Writing Myth
The post Why Writing Takes More, and Less, Time than You Think appeared first on Anne Janzer.
May 7, 2019
How to Write about Metaphorical Gray Rhinos
My first job in marketing involved pitching software for database backup and recovery, specifically to reduce downtime and data loss. At that time, databases weren’t as distributed and resilient as they are now, and outages happened more often than anyone wanted.
We discovered that many businesses weren’t motivated to invest in backup and recovery solutions until after they’d experienced a serious outage. Then the sale was easy. This reticence made no sense, given the financial implications of the outage.
That was my first experience writing about gray rhinos, although I didn’t know about the metaphor and the term until recently, when I met Michele Wucker.
Michele is the author of the book The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore. As a financial journalist, then media and think tank executive, she became interested in the financial risks that we collectively turn away from. Her work has driven her deeper into her first love – psychology – and the human tendency to avoid acting on the big problems heading straight at us.
She’s just done a TED talk on “Why we ignore obvious problems – and how to act on them” I’d suggest you check it out.
I interviewed her for my own book, Writing to Be Understood. In this post, you’ll find an expanded version of the interview that landed in that book. It’s valuable advice if you ever try write about a subject that readers might not want to face.
AJ: What kinds of responses do you get when you write or talk about the “grey rhino” topics – the obvious problems that are heading our way?
MW: People either get it intuitively and say “This is so important” or they give me pushback like, “This problem is obvious, and someone must be dealing with it. So why do we need a book?” A few refer to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s black swan analogy and say, “We can’t foresee anything, so why even try?”
I’ve also found there’s a lot of difference in how people of different cultures, ages and backgrounds view risk and how open they are to hearing and thinking about it. This is especially important because, paradoxically, it’s risky to act in order to reduce risks.
AJ: Often people write about topics that seem obvious to them (aka climate change) without realizing that the audience might not want to acknowledge them. What are the signs that a subject might be a gray rhino to some percentage of the audience?
MW: If it makes you squirm even a bit, your topic is likely to be a gray rhino to someone. But you never know what will push people’s buttons. On a recent episode of The Bachelor, one of the contestants was terrified of a bumper car contest because of a traumatic childhood experience. We all see obvious challenges from different angles, so what one person sees as a threat might be an opportunity to another. A doom junkie might get happier with each gray rhino you pile on!
It helps to test your idea in real life with small groups of people, so you get some sense of the responses you’ll get. In the process, you may also find your superfans, who will help you get the word out about your work.
AJ: Do we need to approach writing about these topics differently?
MW: The first thing I ask the writers I mentor through The Op-Ed Project is: Who is your audience, and what do you want them to do or think differently because they read this piece? Knowing the answer to these questions helps you to craft your writing to maximize its effectiveness. Once you have answered them, delve deeper: Are you writing from an angle that this audience finds important? Do you want them to change their minds, are you helping them to understand an issue, or both? Be sure that you’re telling them something new, whether it’s a new piece of information or a different way to look at something they think they know.
AJ: What are the best strategies for writers in this situation?
MW: Write to hope, not just to fear. There’s a lot of contradictory research into what motivates people most: fear or optimism. But you don’t want to put your readers into such a funk that they give up on the problem at hand, or worse, on reading you’ve written! Include ideas for solutions and stories of people who can inspire your readers through their work.
AJ: What writing strategies do not work in these situations? What should we, as writers, take care to avoid doing?
MW: Don’t preach. Do picture your audience and write to what they care about.
Don’t bombard people with facts; but do include enough facts, in context, that you clearly have done your homework and have strong evidence to back up your point of view.
Steer far clear of anything that sounds like a personal attack; constructive criticism of behavior or outcomes is important and necessary, but the minute you sound like you’re going after someone as a human being, you put your own credibility on the line.
Don’t use hot-button words that might limit the reach of your writing. On the internet, you never know whom you are reaching.
AJ: Your book models a few successful strategies: using stories to lead people to their own conclusions and explaining abstract subjects with concrete examples. What else have you tried to do, as a writing strategy?
MW: I wish I were funnier, as humor is such a great tool for getting people to relax and listen. Also, I try to say the same thing in slightly different ways that build on each other. One of the things that has surprised me is how often you have say some things over and over again for them to sink in. Your reader may be distracted or focused on a different sentence or clause that resonates in a way you didn’t expect; but other readers will get irritated if you are repetitive. Find ways to repeat that don’t sound like repetition.
Other Resources
Check out The Gray Rhino book
Read more of the interviews in Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why
The post How to Write about Metaphorical Gray Rhinos appeared first on Anne Janzer.
April 24, 2019
Detours, Diversions, and Cancellations: Writing as a Journey
Many of my favorite travel experiences were never part of any planned itinerary: running into someone from my hometown in a restaurant in a different continent, an impromptu concert experienced in a cathedral, or the tiny restaurant we stumbled into when the one we planned to visit was full, and which resulted in the most memorable meal of the trip.
Flexible travelers handle unexpected delays and detours with equanimity. They may have itineraries but remain present to the opportunities of each day as it unfolds. The more I try to maintain an open, adaptable mindset, the happier I am while traveling.
The same is true of writing. You may discover things in the process that affect your goals. Sometimes, the destination changes altogether.
I believe that if you immerse yourself in the process of writing, you will experience diversions and direction changes. Deep writing expands your thought processes, if you let it.
How can you bring a “flexible traveler” mindset to your writing?
Write to Explore
Set off on the writing journey without complete, turn-by-turn directions.
Fiction writers speak of being “plotters” or “pantsers.” Those in the first camp carefully plot out the book before writing, while the pantsers let the story unfold as they work. Even dedicated plotters report having rebellious characters who insist on taking the story in an unplanned direction. Once you’re committed to the writing, things start happening.
Nonfiction writers can access the same kind of discovery. In our busy, interrupt-driven world, we often lack the time to think deeply about an idea. Writing about a topic forces this kind of contemplation.
The act of writing is the physical manifestation of deep thought.
Give yourself permission to explore your topic in writing before you outline and draft the final topic. Write about the subject from different angles without a set direction or purpose. Use whatever name works for you for this effort. Here are a few:
“Zero” drafts
Journaling
Freewriting
Letters to yourself
Inner research (a brain dump)
If writing without a purpose sounds frivolous, consider working on smaller projects on your subject.
Michael Lewis is a prolific nonfiction author, writing on topics ranging from finance (The Big Short, Flash Boys) to sports analytics (Money Ball) to cognitive science (The Undoing Project.) In a podcast with the financial blogger Barry Ritholtz, Lewis revealed that some of his books start as smaller projects, such as in-depth articles for the New Yorker magazine. Some of those articles turn into books when he discovers that there’s more to explore. The article is a test bed for the book.
If you’re not comfortable with exploratory writing, consider finding other ways to engage with your topic:
Give a talk at your local library
Teach a workshop
Write a blog series; do a podcast series
Create an online course
The act of researching and synthesizing can take you in unexpected directions. You’ll learn about your topic and the market you hope to reach.
Keep Your Eyes (and Mind) Open
A traveler who remains buried in the guidebook, following the prescribed itinerary, often misses the unexpected vista up a side street. Don’t be that traveler.
Even as you write, watch for unexpected detours and new avenues of research. When something appears, take notes and see if it’s worth pursuing. Integrate the insights into the work or create a file of intriguing digressions.
If you do this long enough, you may notice that the draft is deviating from your initial outline. If that happens to you, rejoice. Your work has outgrown its initial outline. It will be better.
The act of engaging with the topic inevitably inspires changes.
A Note for Nonfiction Authors
Many nonfiction authors experience a structural crisis about halfway through the drafting process. They discover that the outline isn’t working. They lose interest in filling out the initial outline, or want to chapters that don’t have a home in the outline.
The midpoint crisis has happened to my four times (once for each book), and it’s afflicted other nonfiction authors I know. I believe this crisis is the hallmark of of a dedicated writer who is serving the reader and exploring as they write. Their work outgrows the initial outline.
If you’re planning to publish traditionally, do a great deal of research and drafting before you submit a book proposal. Otherwise, you may end up selling a book that you don’t want to write. In addition to the chapter outline and sample chapter, I suggest that you rough out at least half of the book before submitting the proposal, so you get past the midpoint crisis.
Be Willing to Abandon the Itinerary
Taking a new path in your writing inevitably means leaving the old one behind. As you look for opportunities, be aware that you may need to put aside work you’ve already done to pursue a different direction.
Don’t cling to your words. There are more where they came from.
Be careful about of taking this openness too far, however. Productive writers finish their projects. The world is filled with people abandon multiple writing projects, jumping from one to the next while never getting any work out into the world.
We write to explore our subjects and to serve the reader. Unpublished work cannot serve the reader. Like the traveler, eventually you have to land somewhere.
Related Posts
Writers and the Planning Fallacy
The post Detours, Diversions, and Cancellations: Writing as a Journey appeared first on Anne Janzer.
April 5, 2019
Writing for Overloaded Readers: It’s Not Dumbing Down
As college students, we are taught to read and analyze literature or dense texts, and to elaborate our brilliant thoughts in complex sentences. Then we enter the real world, and it all goes out the window.
Business writing coaches and style guides sing the praises of a “conversational” tone in writing. We are encouraged to communicate in a simple, straightforward tone that feels personal and human. (I’m one of those advocates: my book The Workplace Writer’s Process focuses on writing for the reader’s cognitive ease.)
If you have mastered beautiful writing and enjoy savoring the well-turned sentence and intricate prose, you might push back on this advice. You might feel that you’re being asked to “dumb down” your writing.
That’s not so. My advice to pare down and simplify is born from respect for the reader’s cognitive reality.
What’s Happening with the Reader’s Brains
Maryanne Wolf describes the situation beautifully in her book Reader, Come Home. She cites a study by the Global Information Industry Center suggesting that the average reader consumes about 34 gigabytes of content daily. That’s like filtering through something near 100,000 words a day! Your writing has competition.
Worse, and more worrisome, is that because we spend so much time skimming, we start to lose our “cognitive patience” for slowing down and comprehending denser material. We’re training our brains for quick scanning, not deep reading.
What’s a writer to do? It depends on how many people you hope to reach with your words.
If you want to connect with a broad audience, you cannot count your readers’ deep-reading abilities. Your loyal fans and followers might take time to read the work carefully–but don’t count on it. Even if your readers want to take their time with your work, their deep reading time is scarce and those mental circuits may be rusty.
In general, you can go wide or you can go deep. You can’t easily do both at the same time.
Writing Strategies for Reaching a Wide Audience
Once published, your writing becomes a tiny part of those 100,000 words your reader encounters each day. Those words have to get past the attention filters in the reader’s brains.
If you want to change the world, you must first be heard and understood.
To reach a broader audience, write in a way that survives the quick-scanning reading process. This is especially critical when writing content that people will read on screens instead of paper, or when your subject area is something people don’t read for pleasure.
Here are a few ways to reach the distracted, scanning reader:
Create structures like bulleted or numbered lists that help people find what they need quickly.
Use heading and subheads to guide the scanners through key points. (You can even add subheadings in a lengthy email.)
Break up long sentences with many dependent clauses into smaller sentences. The reader’s working memory is already overloaded. It shouldn’t have to juggle your clauses while waiting for the sentence to finish.
Don’t be boring. Sprinkle in unexpected images, motion-based verbs (like sprinkle), or unusual examples to catch the reader’s attention.
Clear and succinct writing doesn’t have to put people to sleep.
Serving the Deep Readers in Your Audience
If your prose is beautiful and your thoughts nuanced, some percentage of your audience will slow down and pay attention. (Or they might put it aside to read later, like my big stack of New Yorker magazines…)
By all means, maintain your masterful prose skills. However, pay attention to where and how readers will encounter this work.
Certain formats signal opportunities for deeper reading, including books, white papers and articles. People are more likely to read printed material with greater attention, if it’s something they want to read. When we read online, our focus must content with open tabs, alerts, menus, and apps always tempting us to abandon the effort.
If you’re writing an article that requires cognitive effort to parse, consider distributing it as a PDF. That simple format decision often signals to the reader that they should treat the piece like a printed work.
And cultivate the reader’s curiosity and interest. If they are investing the effort to work through the piece, make the process worth their deep reading time and cognitive patience.
Postscript: Protecting Your Own Deep Reading
Since reading Wolf’s book, I’ve decided to be more intentional about practicing and sustaining my deep reading skills. I’ve set aside a place for “deep reading” in my life–a chair that’s far from computers, with good light, a notepad and pen at the ready. When I settle in there, I give myself permission to simply read, without thoughts of being productive or finishing the text quickly. It’s lovely.
How do you preserve deep reading in your life?
Related Resources
Writing to Be Understood discusses strategies for communicating nonfiction topics with a wide range of readers.
Read my reviews of two great books on this general topic: Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.
You might enjoy this blog post: Mind Your Tone of Voice.
The post Writing for Overloaded Readers: It’s Not Dumbing Down appeared first on Anne Janzer.
April 3, 2019
Reader, Come Home: A Book Review
Short Version
In Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, Maryanne Wolf makes the argument that the digital world is transforming our reading brains, and not always for the better. Only by understanding these changes can we figure out how to navigate them and form a brighter future for a literate, and digital, society.
(When you read the book, you’ll recognize the irony of leaving a shortened version of the review.)
Long Version
In her latest book, cognitive scientist, literacy advocate, and author Maryanne Wolf suggests that we are in the midst of a transition from a literacy-based culture to a digital one, without necessarily understanding the costs, risks, and cognitive effects of that shift.
Reader, Come Home is Wolf’s personal foray into what that shift means and how we should be thinking about it as parents, teachers, citizens, and readers.
She grounds her argument in cognitive science. We must learn and develop reading as a skill; our brains are not hard-wired for reading, but co-opt a variety of different mental systems into what Wolf refers to as our reading circuit. We train this circuit throughout our education as we learn to read with more depth and analysis. If all goes well, we develop a love of reading and can lose ourselves in a good book.
But there’s one big reason we cannot take this reading ability for granted: neuroplasticity. Much like our muscles, our brains adapt to the activities we use them for. As Wolf writes, the reading circuitry in our brains is influenced by what and how we read. If we spend all of our time skimming through text, impatiently clicking through to the next thing or scanning for the gist and moving on, those are the mental circuits we will reinforce, often at the cost of deep reading capabilities.
As to why this matters, Wolf says it best: “When language and thought atrophy, when complexity wanes and everything becomes more and more the same, we run great risks in society politic—whether from extremists in a religion or a political organization or, less obviously, from advertisers.”
The Book’s Structure
In an appropriate gesture to the literary past, Wolf frames the work as a series of letters. (That’s an epistolary format, for the English majors out there.) This choice lets her speak directly to us as readers, whether we are skimming or deep reading.
Each letter offers a different filter on these essential questions: Is the way that we read changing because of our increasingly digital environment? What does that mean for analytical thought? How can we understand what’s happening, and how should we approach this shift, particularly when it comes to teaching children?
In the second letter/chapter, Wolf describes the “reading circuit” in the brain using the analogy of an elaborately choreographed circus performance like a Cirque du Soleil show. The act of reading engages both hemispheres, multiple lobes, and all of the layers of the brain. While the centers for vision, language, and cognition have the most action, they’re not the entire show. The affective (emotional) and motor systems in our brains are standing by, poised to join in when we encounter an analogy or image that triggers an emotional response. Reading and comprehending is a remarkable feat.
In the chapter describing deep reading, Wolf describes the many cognitive processes that reading develops and supports, including empathy, analogical reasoning, and critical analysis. And in the chapter entitled “What Will Become of the Readers,” Wolf recounts her personal experience of revising a book she had loved earlier in her life—Hesse’s Magister Ludi—only to find that she could not tolerate reading it. In the course of researching, thinking about, and teaching reading skills, her own deep reading abilities had diminished. She had to retrain her own deep reading capabilities.
If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. Take care.
In chapters focused on parents and educators, Wolf offers sound advice for raising literate children adept at both deep reading and navigating the digital world by finding a happy balance and making a planned transition to digital forms. Spoiler alert: keep reading those physical books to young children!
Key Take-Aways
This book spoke to me on many levels.
As a cognitive science geek, I loved Wolf’s descriptions of the mental processes of reading.
As a nonfiction writer, I was particularly taken with the research on how much information we are all subjected to on a daily basis. Wolf cites studies suggesting that the average person encounters 100,000 words a day; clearly skimming is our only defense. That’s why it’s so critical, when you’re creating marketing or business content, to support that skimming reader, rather than counting on the efforts of a focused, deliberate reader.
As a lifelong reader, I mourned the reduction of deep reading in my own life, and resolved to do something about it—starting with this book. I slowed down, took notes on the neuroscience, and savored the prose, like the following:
“How we reckon with the time we are given—in milliseconds, hours, and days—may well be the most important thing any of us chooses in an age of continuous flux.”
Reading this book has made me resolve to protect my deep reading time, and keep training those neural circuits.
Other Related Reviews
Books for Writers: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
For advice on writing to reach that distracted reader, see my book Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why.
The post Reader, Come Home: A Book Review appeared first on Anne Janzer.
